pkh's post led me to try to remove Endpoint Protection 11.0.3 from my Win2K Server SP4 computer, hoping to be able to back up the registry. It worked but the price wasn't worth it. Or maybe it was.
I tried to remove SEP but the removal failed. Then I contacted Symantec tech support. After some difficulties and messing with the registry, the tech got SEM removed, and I was able to back up the system state, but my network card no longer worked. We worked for four more hours to get the network card going. Network cards are a good thing for an application server.
Symantec gave up on the network card and I turned to Dell. The Dell technicians also worked for a few hours to get the card properly reinstalled, but nothing worked. I mean nothing. Removing drivers. Trying original drivers. Trying new drivers. Safe mode. Recovery Console. Emergency Repair Disk.
So I reinstalled the operating system, including formatting and repartitioning the hard drives. Rather than restore from an available tape, and possibly reinstall the corrupted registry, I installed from scratch. I have just finished manually installing all the applications and profiles.
It was a chore, but I didn't lose any data, and now I have a much cleaner install. I am very hesitant about reinstalling SEP. I think I will, but only after I have some really good full backups sitting on a shelf available to streamline my next recovery.
And I can reliably back up the system state with NTbackup and with Backup Exec 12.5.
Barry